Issuing refunds with Lightspeed Payments

Occasionally, customers may ask for their money back for an order for a wide variety of reasons: if a purchase arrived damaged, the item size was wrong, or they just changed their mind. With Lightspeed Payments, you can make a full or partial refund from the My sales → Orders page in your store admin. You can also perform multiple partial refunds on the same order.

Lightspeed Payments refunds use the same payment method and currency that was used to pay for the order. The refund will be paid from the account you use to get payments for the order. A buyer will get an email notification about the refund and receive money within 5–10 business days.

Creating a refund with Lightspeed Payments

You can refund the total order amount or just a part of it. If you create a partial refund, you can later return the remaining amount to a client. Depending on your return policy, you can include or exclude any additional spendings in refunds, such as shipping costs, handling fee, or tips. Lightspeed Payments will not return a transaction fee you paid for an order.

The status of a refunded order will automatically change to the Refunded or Partially refunded immediately after you create a refund. Products won't be automatically restocked, you will have to manually manage your inventory.

In case your Lightspeed Payments balance is equal or lower than the refund amount, Lightspeed Payments automatically offsets negative transactions against future payouts. While your account balance is negative, Lightspeed Payments will not send payouts to your bank account. You will start receiving payouts again once your balance is positive.

To make a full or partial refund with Lightspeed Payments:

1. From your store admin, go to My sales → Orders.
2. Select an order you want to refund.
3. In the Update order dropdown menu at the top, select Refund order.
4. In the Refund Amount, enter the amount you want to return to a customer.
5. (optional) If you do not want to send a notification to a customer, untick the Send email with refund details to customer checkbox.
6. (optional) In the Reason for refund, enter why the customer asked for a refund or what products were refunded.
7. Click Refund.

Once you issue a refund from your store admin, Lightspeed Payments will immediately transfer the money. Then, the transfer process between your and your client’s banks starts that may take up to 10 business days. If a customer hasn't received money after 10 business days, they must contact their bank.

Viewing refund details for Lightspeed Payments

Details about each refund are stored on the order details page. There you can check out the refund amount for a particular order or the reason for a refund.

To get an at-a-glance overview of a refund:

1. From your store admin, go to My sales → Orders.
2. Select the order you refunded.
3. Scroll down to the Refund details section to see the information about the refund:
   

   

Restocking refunded inventory

Depending on your Shipping and Return policy, your customers may need to return an item before you can issue a refund. In that case, you will need to manually update the stock quantity for a product since it won’t be automatically restocked.

To rectock a refunded order:

1. From your store admin, go to My sales → Orders page.
2. Find the returned order and change its fulfillment status to Returned.
3. Select the order and click on a refunded product.
4. In the Stock Control section on the right-hand side, click Manage.
5. Update the quantity.
6. Click Save.

You can inform customers about returning and refunding terms by describing your Shipping and Return/Refund policy on a legal page that you can share in your online store.